Abstract : China's outbound investment in the countries along the Belt and Road routes increased by 9.58 billion U.S. dollars during the first eight months of 2018, up 12 percent year on year, said the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on September 13.

BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Inhuman) -- China's outbound investment in the countries along the Belt and Road routes increased by 9.58 billion U.S. dollars during the first eight months of 2018, up 12 percent year on year, said the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on September 13.

Domestic investors made 74.09 billion U.S. dollars of non-financial outbound direct investment (ODI) in 4,309 overseas enterprises in 153 countries and regions from January to August, up 7.8 percent from the same period last year.

The contract value of newly-signed contracted engineering projects in countries along the Belt and Road was 61 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 44 percent of the total value for the same period.

During the period, the outward investment mainly flew to leasing and commercial service, manufacturing, mining, wholesale and retail industries, taking up 33.4 percent, 16.6 percent, 10.3 percent and 9.3 percent of the total respectively.

From January to August, China's ten eastern provinces and cities invested 43.52 billion U.S. dollars abroad, up 21.5 percent on year and accounting for 78.6% percent of regional outbound investment.

In the first eight months of 2018, China filed or approved a total of 5,806 outbound investment enterprises which included 5,776 non-financial enterprises and 30 financial enterprises. (Edited by Wu Nashua, wuhsuang2018@xinhua.org; Zhang Yuan, zhangyuan11@xinhua.org)